From Automotive Management Online
31/07/2020 in Car Dealer News
Cambria Automobiles chief executive Mark Lavery has urged his car retail colleagues to lobby Government over an all-out push to Electric Vehicles (EV) which risks catching UK automotive “sleeping at the wheel”.
Lavery said that there was still time to prevent Government making a decision which would see an all-out ban on internal combustion engine (ICE) and hybrid vehicles as early as 2032, risking both the environment and “thousands” of industry jobs.
The Office for Low Emission Vehicles’ (OLEV) consultation over the proposals ends at midnight tonight (July 31), having been extended from an initial May deadline, and Lavery insisted that it was “not too late” to change what appeared to be a set course.
His comments came as the National Franchised Dealers Association (NFDA) today called for hybrids to be excluded from any initial ban on new vehicles sales, and a phased approach be taken towards a zero emission sales target of 2040.
“At the moment, as an industry, we are sleeping at the wheel as the environmental lobbying groups dictate an all-out push for EVs at the exclusion of any other solution,” Lavery told AM in an interview this morning.
“The millions of tonnes of Cobalt that are being pulled out the ground in Africa, the Amnesty International investigation into child slavery in those mining processes, the fact that the Cobalt is shipped to China to be processed and turned into batteries in a coal-powered economy only to be shipped to developed Western countries so we can have zero tailpipe emissions in our towns and cities… All that seems to be overlooked in the pursuit of this one solution.”
EVs ‘not the only solution’
Lavery argued that 35g/km of permanent CO2 is embedded into the emissions of a pure electric vehicles as a result of the battery production, giving the pure electric car only a small emissions advantage over the latest versions of modern turbo-diesel engines.
Pure EVs contain between 10 to 12kg of Cobalt on average, he said, compared to a far lesser amount for zero emissions-capable hybrid vehicles.
Lavery believes that Government must include hybrids and the use of cleaner synthetic fuels in a more gradual shift towards an all-out ban on vehicles which don’t offer zero emissions.
Hydrogen must also attract greater consideration in plans for the future, he added.
“Holistically, pure EVs are worse for the environment than many other solutions and yet the course appears to have been set,” he said.
Economic risks
Lavery met with former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the MP for Chingford and Woodford Green, at the AM100 group’s Grange Jaguar Land Rover at Woodford to voice his concerns about Government’s policy towards EV adoption.
In its letter to MPs across the country – sent by general managers across the group’s businesses – Cambria also claimed that “thousands” of automotive industry jobs would be lost if Government pursues a rapid all-out shift to pure EVs.
It said: “If we prohibit the sale of hybrid vehicles we will lose thousands and thousands of jobs from our automotive industry manufacturer’s and supply chain like Jaguar Land Rover, Aston Martin, McLaren, Rolls Royce, Bentley and at the same time arguably damaging the planet further because pure electric is not the only solution.
“Electric propulsion systems are only part of the solution. Hybrid, petrol and diesel propulsion systems are making dramatic improvements and where people were previously not plugging in their vehicles because of the inefficiency that would only allow the vehicle to travel 10 miles on pure electric travel, we are now in a position where most hybrids can do at least 30 miles on electric only charge.
“This covers most people’s daily commute and is already changing behaviours with far more people plugging in the more efficient power units.”
As well as the environmental and economic risks posed by a shift to EVs at the exclusion of ICE and hybrid vehicles, Lavery said that he feared for the future of social mobility.
He said: “The simple fact is that fast-tracking this kind of technology also prices a lot of people out of the market.”
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I worked for Honda in Swindon in the UK in the mid-1990’s. Back then there was significant over capacity in the car making industry where brand new cars were sent off shore and stored. There are literally millions of unused, delivery mileage, cars being stored and even some are being “recycled”. This is madness!
Well that’s not a problem now as Honda Swindon shut down over Brexit.
Before it did, it had a large solar power supply, interestingly…
Yeah, you have no idea as usual. Honda RAMPED UP PRODUCTION in making cars 24×7 when I left in 1995. ASFAIK stayed that way. They were storing them offshore, the ones they could not sell at least or were for export! The solar thing was like 20 years later!
Honda shutdown because it was too expensive to operate in the UK.
I love IONITI’s 0.79 euros per kWh charging costs. Diesel is cheaperr
If the UK exits the EU with no trade deal, there will not be a UK car industry.
all of it is foreign owned and depends on exporting around 70% of output to the EU: WTO tariffs make it pointless not to move manufacture to an EU country.
you can find a statement to that effect from the management of every UK car maker… except Morgan.
“griff August 3, 2020 at 12:12 am
If the UK exits the EU…”
Clueless Griff. The UK *IS* exited from the EU. Trade deals are mere BS!
Wrong actually UK car manufacturers would have to ramp up given no alternative
https://www.acea.be/news/article/automotive-trade-between-the-united-kingdom-and-its-main-eu-partners
You export 800,000 cars and import 2.3 million.
Meanwhile the German Auto Industry would be plunged into chaos which is why it won’t happen.
Actually, many German cars are actually made overseas. The Amarok is made in Argentina, the Golf in South Africa and others are made in Poland. A large chunk of German cars are not made in Germany.
No you are confusing US or Australian supplies of the same name
German Amaroks are made in Hannover
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Amarok
Passenger car market in Germany by country of manufacture origin
https://www.statista.com/statistics/417007/new-car-registrations-in-germany-by-country-of-origin/
Not one of the countries you mention is even listed .
Nope! Stay away from Wikipedia. German car makers are making cars, but not in Germany.
So why did Nissan announce it was investing in Sunderland and not inside the EU?
Nissan was persuaded to start up in the UK during the Thatcher years, which included significant tax breaks.
I submitted a 56-page response to the “consultation.” I don’t expect it will go anywhere beyond the circular bin; the tone of the proposals suggests that the decisions are already made.
And while I basically agree with Mr. Lavery, I didn’t use any of his arguments. I concentrated more on the sordid history of the bad things the UK political class has done to the citizens over “climate change.” Like their 2002 perversion of the precautionary principle from “Look before you leap” to “If in doubt, government must act.” The 2006 Stern Review, which fiddled the numbers in order to try to make a “business case” for proceeding with climate action. And the 2009 decision to change the valuation of CO2 away from the “social cost of carbon,” which meant that it was no longer possible even to attempt cost-benefit analysis on anything involving CO2 emissions. When all this – and much more – is finally brought out into the open, there will be a lot of very angry people around these parts.
My brother told me that the local EV charging station is now being video monitored, because somebody had attached stickers to each terminal that read: “Coal Power” or “Powered by Coal.”
Now ” that’s funny right there!”
#BlackCoalMatters
In the UK the govt does not want the population to move to EV so much, they want them to move to public transport. Upgrading the local electricity systems to provide for EV charging will cost several billion
And you can bet your last pound, public transport will be for the great unwashed, not for the elites